Research projects & collaboration
The LHEEA is involved in many research projects and collaborations.
MARINE ENERGY ALLIANCE
The Marine Energy Alliance aims to progress the combined technical and commercial maturity level of 40 SMEs by delivering a suite of bespoke integrated technical and commercial services.
OCEAN DEMO
Ocean DEMO is a €13m project targeting the installation of ocean energy devices in EU waters. Its objective is to scale technologies up to multi-machine readiness by providing free access to Europe’s world-leading network of test centres and to drive innovation across the ocean energy supply chain. To boost market uptake and confirm the potential of ocean energy to investors, Ocean DEMO will run a competitive voucher scheme supporting technology development through a combined transnational offering across NWE test infrastructures. It is funded by the Interreg North West Europe programme, part of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).FLOAWER
FLOAting Wind Energy netwoRk (FLOAWER) is an Innovative Training Network (ITN), a European project that brings together leading academics and industry leaders in the offshore wind industry, and floating wind turbines in particular. Its goal is to strengthen the leadership and competitiveness of this industry in Europe.
FLOATECH
With the objective of increasing the technical maturity and the cost competitiveness of floating offshore wind energy, FLOATECH aims to stimulate this transition.Launched in January 2021 for a duration of 3 years and coordinated by TU Berlin, FLOATECH is a European H2020 project bringing together five public research institutions, including Centrale Nantes and its LHEEA research lab, with relevant expertise in offshore floating wind energy and three industrial partners involved in the most recent developments of floating wind systems.
Blue-GIFT
The Blue-GIFT (Blue Growth and Innovation Fast Tracked) is a coordinated ocean energy technology demonstration programme encouraging longer-term demonstration and technology de-risking across the Atlantic Area regions. This €2.5 million project is funded by Interreg Atlantic Area. A series of test site access vouchers will be offered to successful applicants to support testing of devices and subsystems at the following test centres including the SEM-REV.
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MaRINET 2
MaRINET2 aims to help industry accelerate the development of offshore renewable energy technologies and infrastructure by opening up access to 57 test facilities across 13 European countries, including the hydrodynamics and ocean engineering tank (HOET) and the SEMREV offshore test site, both run by the LHEEA from Centrale Nantes.
FLOATGEN
Today, FLOATGEN is the only offshore wind turbine, whether fixed or floating, to be installed in France. The project named Floatgen, managed by Ideol, Centrale Nantes and Bouygues TP is a 2 MW floating wind turbine and is the first offshore wind turbine in France.Construction work on the floating foundation took place between 2016 and 2017 in Saint Nazaire. It was inaugurated on 2017 October 13th and was installed on the Centrale Nantes offshore test site, SEM-REV, on April 2018 to perform all tests in real conditions. Since September 2018, the Floatgen wind turbine has been exporting kWh to the power grid.
SARAH
SARAH (Increased Safety & Robust Certification for ditching of Aircrafts & Helicopters) is a Horizon 2020 collaborative project, aiming at establishing novel holistic, simulation-based approaches to the analysis of aircraft and helicopter ditching. The LHEEA is in charge of the test campaign focused on helicopters, it will be carried out at the Ocean Tank.
FORESEA
The FORESEA project was launched to help enterprises test and demonstrate low carbon energy technologies in real sea environments at the following test infrastructure. SEM-REV participates in FORESEA alongside other European sites on the Atlantic coast with an international dimension: EMEC in Scotland, Smart Bay in Ireland and Tidal Testing Center in the Netherlands.Two new technologies were tested at the SEM-REV offshore test site in 2017, developed by Geps Techno and Pytheas Technology.
LHEEA is currently involved in several industrial chairs and partnerships:
- Bureau Veritas - Centrale Nantes Chair in hydrodynamics and marine structures
- Mann+Hummel - Centrale Nantes Chair: “Innovative intake systems and thermo-management”
- "System Modeling for the Control and Development of Internal Combustion Engines", Centrale Nantes/Renault/LMS A SIEMENS BUSINESS Chair
- Joint Laboratory of Marine Technology, Naval Group, Sirehna, Centrale Nantes
- Stellantis & Centrale Nantes R&D programme dedicated to digital simulation techniques for powertrain design
- MAN Energy Solutions - Centrale Nantes Chair
- HyMot project to decarbonise light commercial vehicles
- Centrale Nantes & Siemens Digital Industries Software chair on numerical simulation applied to fluid mechanics
- MERVENT 2025 project: Construction of the first hybrid sail/synthetic fuel powered container ship